


I'm With Stupid

by intangible_girl



Category: Hulk vs. Wolverine, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Liv Tyler and Mark Ruffalo would be so hot onscreen together, Multiplicity/Plurality, Romance, and betty is a scientist first and foremost, bruce banner's daddy issues, bruce works some things out with hulk, kind of?, not that much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 09:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intangible_girl/pseuds/intangible_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never thought he'd miss kissing this much. He'd enjoy it more if he didn't have a big, green backseat passenger to worry about.</p><p>Bruce comes home to Betty after the events of the Avengers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm With Stupid

**Author's Note:**

> There is a brief mention of Wolverine based on the events of the animated film Hulk vs. Wolverine, which I like to imagine took place some time between Hulk (2008) and The Avengers. And don't worry: everything you need to know about that movie is contained in the title.

They’re kissing, and Bruce hadn’t thought he’d miss _kissing_ this much, except that what he really missed, all those years (seven years and counting, but really he’d been touched-starved for a lot longer than that) was just being so near another human being that you can hear them breathing and feel their heartbeat and know that they can hear and feel you back. Sick people don’t count.

Betty breaks away with a gasp and smiles at him.

“Are you okay?” she asks in a breathy whisper, running her beautiful fingers through his messy hair, seemingly heedless of the gray that hadn’t been there the last time. His brain takes too long to process her question and he’s already back to kissing her before he realizes what she means. He pulls away gently and looks long at her face, feeling out his own body. They are safe—for now.

“I’m… Betty, we can’t.”

She groans in an exaggerated fashion and throws her head back.

“We can’t even _make out_?” she demands, tugging on his shirt, but her lips are curved up and she is still regarding him with that soft smile that makes him feel like the luckiest bastard that ever lived.

“Well…” he hedges, and she leans right back down, mischievous glint in her eye. He lets her work his mouth open and play around a little before pulling away.

“Betty, we have to discuss this.”

She sighs and places one wide palm against his chest, fingers pressing into flesh just slightly. Then she gazes up at him with those wide, beautiful eyes, waiting patiently for him to speak. It takes a moment.

“Betty…”

“There are ways to keep your heart rate down during sex, you know,” she says, and if her legs wrapped around him and her wide pupils weren’t enough proof, her voice is so full of desire it sends a flush of heat down his body. He swallows.

“It’s not actually about heart rate. Not anymore.”

“It’s not?” And this, this is why he’d love her even if she weren’t loveliness incarnate: as drugged with passion as she had been, she sobers up instantly at the chance to discover something new, to talk _science_ with him. He pulls his fingers through her long, dark hair without even thinking about the motion.

“No. It has more to do with the fight-or-flight response being triggered. When I’m in danger, or…”

She sits up straighter.

“Bruce, that’s _fascinating_ ,” and he’d known coming here was the right thing from the moment she opened the door, but this just drives it home even further: he _loves_ this woman. “That changes our understanding of the whole thing completely. If it’s not purely physiological…”

“I know. It’s much worse,” he says flatly, but she’s always appreciated his dark humor and she smiles and pushes a stray curl away from his face. “You know I never put much stock in psychology…”

“I always thought you just hated Dr. Kane.”

“That didn’t help.”

They’re smiling at each other, soft, fervent, affectionate, and it takes all his hard-earned self-control not to kiss her again.

“I hate to admit it, but I think the Other Guy is some kind of expression of my subconscious—a true monster from the id, if you will.”

She laughs through her nose, once. Seeing _Forbidden Planet_ at a campus screening on Halloween had been the date that made them both realize they were head over heels for each other, and they watched it on silly anniversaries celebrating their first French kiss or their 8th month of dating. She thinks through the implications of this new information, and he lets her, running her hair through his fingers like he’s dying of thirst. After a moment’s contemplation she looks back up at him, expression wry.

“Bruce, I know it’s been a long time for both of us, but I’m pretty sure I can avoid triggering your fight-or-flight response during sex. And since I’m pretty sure you don’t secretly hate me—” He laughs, gulpingly, and pulls her in close, because nothing could be farther from the truth, “well, then… what’s the problem?”

He sighs into her hair, not letting her go.

“I don’t want to risk it. If I transform while we’re… It would be a disaster. I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

“Bruce, what risk is there? If we go slow—”

“There’s always a risk. I could lose control—”

“Bruce.”

Her voice is stern, and he pulls away to look at her. Her face matches her tone, and she lets him squirm under it for a long moment.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” she says in a voice so low he can barely hear her. He frowns.

“I think I’d remember—”

“Not about—you. About Brian.”

It’s like a bucket of ice water being poured directly into his brain, flushing down his system and invading his veins, freezing them and leaving jagged icicles where warmth used to be. He can’t move, can’t breathe, his skin feels too tight, and oh god what if he loses it right here and now?

That thought is enough to make him draw in an unsteady breath, and the icicles shatter, though he’s still freezing.

“What?” he breathes, because he hasn’t thought about Brian in _years_ ( _every year, every day, every time he looks in a mirror_ ) and hearing his name is enough to completely undo him. Betty grabs his face in her long, strong fingers, and anchors him.

“Do you remember? We were on our way home and we were arguing about—something, and you stopped the car and got out.”

“I was afraid I was going to crash the car I was so mad,” he recites, still feeling detached.

“That was when you told me about your father, and then you tried to break up with me.”

“I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you.”

“And I told you that you were not going to spontaneously turn into your father any more than I was going to turn into mine. That goes double now, by the way,” she adds darkly, and then goes on. “And that’s as true now as it was then. You’re not him. You never will be. I trust you.”

“It’s different now,” he pleads, unable to move away like he knows he should. Coming here was a terrible idea, he should have just gone back to India or Siberia or even stayed with fucking _Stark_ , anything was better than dangling the best thing in his life in front of himself and then remembering why he had to snatch it away. “If I lose control—we’re not talking about black eyes, here, Betts. I could _kill_ you.”

“You won’t,” she says fiercely, and he almost believes her. “Don’t you remember? He was always gentle with me. He would never hurt me. And _neither will you_.”

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the first tear drips off his chin, and then he really does have to pull away, stand up, wrap his arms around himself, and, guiltily, _force it down_ , because even if it gives fuel to the Other Guy, he can’t let himself go like this, not in front of Betty, not in front of anyone. Not losing control has been important to him for a lot longer than seven years.

“Bruce,” she whispers in his ear, apparently having stood up with him. “You’re allowed to be happy.”

 _I’m always angry_. That wasn’t the secret to controlling the Other Guy, not really. It was just the truth. He didn’t lose control when he got angry, he got angry when he lost control, and since he was always angry, he was terrified to think that maybe that meant he didn’t have any control in the first place. He remembers a stale apartment in Deerhead, Alaska, getting low, swallowing the barrel of a gun. He remembers the roar of displeasure he wasn’t sure was inside his head or out of it, and waking up later whole and unharmed in a pile of wreckage that had been a thriving town the day before. _I’m always angry_ , and he always was; even at his happiest with Betty, there had been that thin metal thread running under everything that he tried to pretend wasn’t there.

He was _not_ allowed to be happy. Monsters weren’t allowed to be happy.

“Bruce,” she whispers, and he’s crying again, or still, he’s still crying, hasn’t he shed enough tears? Hasn’t he been through enough? When is it ever going to stop?

He is saying all of this out loud, not even bothering to hide his tears now, not when Betty is there to cling to and bury his face in. He hasn’t cried since Canada, and that awful business with Wolverine, where he was reminded that tears are useless things, tears are for babies, Bruce, and Banners don’t cry. Banners are men, and they don’t cry. Stop crying. Stop crying, dammit! 

He doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. And if that makes him a baby, then so be it. Better a baby than a monster.

He cries himself out, and when he’s done, Betty lowers them back down on the couch, his head on her breast, and he closes his eyes and dozes.

Sometimes when he’s like this, half awake and half asleep, he can almost feel the Other Guy, as though he is a physical presence. Normally he’s nothing but a vague sense of pressure (vague, that is, until he becomes blindingly sharp) but here, in this limbo state, he can almost _talk_ to him.

“Puny Banner stupid.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

“ _Stupid_.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why am I stupid?”

“Stupid tell Betty no sex.”

Bruce splutters. The truth is, in some ways he thinks of the Hulk as a child. An angry, out-of-control child much as he himself had been at about age six or seven. But the Hulk isn’t six or seven, is he?

“What, you’re going to interfere with my love life, now?”

“Don’t have one,” the Other Guy leers, and Bruce rolls his eyes. Sometimes he’s not entirely sure these sessions _aren’t_ just him talking to himself. (Which they are. That’s all they are. 

…right?) 

“No, I don’t, thanks to _you_.”

The big guy just gives him a sour look, and Bruce wanders away, thinking about nothing, drifting up to the surface and just breaking it enough to get a sense of Betty’s fingers in his hair, and then he’s back down under and the Hulk is still looking at him like he’s done something wrong.

“What?” he demands.

“Banner have sex, Hulk have sex,” he says, and boy _that’s_ nightmare fuel he never thought he’d be lucky enough to have. He shudders, and the big guy huffs in annoyance. “No. _Banner_ have sex, Hulk _happy_. Banner happy. Betty happy.”

“Yeah, the threesome from hell,” Bruce mutters, and his alter ego takes him by the shoulders and _shakes_ him. Because this is a dream, he’s unharmed, but it is still a relief to be let go.

“Banner have sex!” he roars, sounding very put out, and Bruce groans.

“I can’t, idiot, I can’t risk you coming out and ruining everything.”

“Won’t.”

“Oh, really? Can I get that in writing?”

“Won’t. Banner not in danger while have sex. Banner in danger if _not_ have sex.”

“Whaat?” Seriously? He’s being threatened in his own head?

“Frustrated!” And because they do share head space Bruce can tell he means both of them; and it’s true. He is pretty sexually frustrated. And there’s no reason to suppose that won’t transfer over to the Hulk.

“How do I know you won’t come out?” he says suspiciously. Hulk gives him a look that says volumes about his supposed intelligence.

“Hulk come out, no have sex,” he says, and Bruce half expects him to add, _duh_. 

Outside, Betty is shifting position and it wakes him up, and right before he swims back to consciousness he can sort of get a sense of the Other Guy shuffling backwards, out of his way. It’s a disconcerting feeling, considering he’s always clamoring to get out, or at least just sitting there, biding his time. It leaves him a little off balance, and he opens his eyes and finds that the light coming through the windows has shifted and Betty is no longer underneath him. He sits up, stiff and sore, and she peeks her head into in the room. When she finds him awake, she smiles and walks over to him.

“Have a good nap?”

“Yeah,” he says, yawning. “Had the weirdest dream, though.”

“Tell me about it over tea?” she says, and he looks up at her, smiling that soft smile she doesn’t give to anyone but him, and he actually thinks that he will.

  
  



End file.
